1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to image processing apparatuses, information processing apparatuses, image processing methods, and information processing methods.
2. Description of the Related Art
Generally, when an image is read by a document reader, the orientation of the acquired image depends on a reading direction, which is determined by the physical mechanism of the document reader. Thus, in order to obtain an image placed in an upright orientation, an acquired image has to be rotated to an upright orientation in consideration of various parameters relating to the reading direction, such as the orientation of placement of an original document, setting of the opening direction of the original document, and whether the original document is fed from an automatic document feeder (ADF) or the document is placed and read on an image reader plate. It has hitherto been the case to execute the rotation at an image processing apparatus including a document reader, so that an application that uses the image read by the document reader need not consider the orientation of the image.
Unfortunately, however, the processing ability of a document reader is usually lower than that of an ordinary personal computer (PC) due to cost restrictions. Thus, it may take a considerable processing time to rotate an image at the document reader, increasing the time required to finish image transmission. In view of the recent increase in the demand for reading a large number of sheets of original document and converting the original document into electronic form, such as data entry for a print-on-demand (POD) service, work efficiency could be reduced if it takes a considerable time to execute processing for image transmission from the image processing apparatus to the PC.
As another approach, for example, according to techniques disclosed in Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 4-150142, instead of rotating an image at a document reader, at a recipient apparatus having received the image, a user specifies a manner of rotation on a display at the recipient apparatus so that a rotated version of the image is displayed.
As yet another approach, for example, according to techniques disclosed in Japanese Patent No. 3175550, an image read by a document reader is transmitted to a recipient apparatus together with information specifying a manner of image processing that is to be executed on the image, without limitation to rotation, so that the image is processed in the specified manner at the recipient apparatus.
As described above, when an image is rotated at an image processing apparatus, work efficiency could be reduced if it takes a considerable time to execute processing for image transmission from the image processing apparatus to a PC.
On the other hand, when an image is rotated at a recipient apparatus instead of rotating the image at an image processing apparatus, it is possible to reduce processing time associated with image rotation at the image processing apparatus. However, if the recipient apparatus is incapable of executing image rotation, the image cannot be rotated, so that it may not be possible to obtain an intended image orientation. In this case, when a user edits the image using an editing application running on the recipient apparatus, a user has to specify a direction of rotation and execute rotation on a page-by-page basis while visually checking the orientation of the image. This increases the user's workload.
As described above, there has not existed a mechanism that allows both quickly executing processing for transmission of an image read by an image forming apparatus to a recipient apparatus (e.g., a PC) and reduction of the load of user operations at the recipient apparatus.